But what about the times when the little green men actually leave something behind? Or the artifacts people from ancient times have constructed to honor what could only be visitors from other planets? There are many strange objects in the world, both enigmatic and man-made, that are said to be proof of alien life.

====================================================================It may be called weed, but marijuana is legendarily hard to grow.
Now that the drug has been made legal in Washington and Colorado, growers face a dilemma. State-sanctioned gardening coaches can help folks cultivate tomatoes or zucchini, but both states have instructed them not to show people the best way to grow marijuana. The situation is similar in more than a dozen additional states that allow people to grow the drug with medical permission.
That’s leaving some would-be marijuana gardeners looking to the private sector for help raising the temperamental plant.
“We can’t go there,” said Brian Clark, a spokesman for Washington State University in Pullman, which runs the state’s extension services for gardening and agriculture. “It violates federal law, and we are a federally funded organization.”
The issue came up because people are starting to ask master gardeners for help in growing cannabis, Clark said. Master gardeners are volunteers who work through state university systems to provide horticultural tips in their communities.
The situation is the same in Colorado, where Colorado State University in Fort Collins recently added a marijuana policy to its extension office, warning that any employee who provides growing assistance acts outside the scope of his or her job and “assumes personal liability for such action.”
The growing predicament is just the latest quandary for these states that last year flouted federal drug law by removing criminal penalties for adults over 21 with small amounts of pot. In Washington, home-growing is banned, but it will be legal to grow pot commercially once state officials establish rules and regulations.
In Colorado, adults are allowed to grow up to six marijuana plants in their own homes, so long as they’re in a locked location out of public view.
At least two Colorado entrepreneurs are taking advantage of that aspect of the law; they’re offering growing classes that have attracted wannabe professional growers, current users looking to save money by growing their own pot and a few baby boomers who haven’t grown pot in decades and don’t feel comfortable going to a marijuana dispensary.
“We’ve been doing this on our own, but I wanted to learn to grow better,” said Ginger Grinder, a medical marijuana patient from Portales, N.M., who drove to Denver for a “Marijuana 101” class she saw advertised online.
Grinder, a stay-at-home mom who suffers from lupus and fibromyalgia, joined about 20 other students earlier this month for a daylong crash course in growing the finicky marijuana plant.
Taught in a rented room at a public university, the course had students practicing on tomato plants because pot is prohibited on campus. The group took notes on fertilizer and fancy hydroponic growing systems, and snipped pieces of tomato plants to practice cloning, a common practice for nascent pot growers to start raising weed from a “mother” marijuana plant.
Ted Smith, a longtime instructor at an indoor gardening shop, led the class, and warned these gardeners that their task won’t be easy. Marijuana is fickle, he said. It’s prone to mildews and molds, picky about temperature and pH level, intolerant to tap water.
A precise schedule is also a must, Smith warned, with set light and dark cycles and watering at the same time each day. Unlike many house plants, Smith warned, marijuana left alone for a long weekend can curl and die.
“Just like the military … they need to know when they’re getting their water and chow,” Smith said of the plants.
The class was the brainchild of Matt Jones, a 24-year-old Web developer who wanted to get into the marijuana business without raising or selling it himself. As a teenager, Jones once tried to grow pot himself in empty Home Depot paint buckets. He used tap water and overwatered, and the marijuana wilted and died.
“It was a disaster,” he recalled. Jones organized the class and an online “THC University” for home growers, but his own thumb isn’t green. Jones said he’ll be buying his marijuana from professional growers.

The course showed would-be grower Cael Nodd, a 34-year-old stagehand in Denver, that marijuana gardening can be an intimidating prospect.
“It seems like there’s going to be a sizable investment,” he said. “I want something that really tastes good. Doesn’t seem like it will be that easy.”

North Korea now has an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States, as demonstrated by their successful launch and orbiting of a satellite on Dec. 12, the Washington Times reports.

In fact, the Times report says, “North Korea is a mortal nuclear threat to the United States – right now.”

It’s not just the threat of conventional nuclear attack that has experts worried. Nor is the North Korea invasion scenario in the new remake of “Red Dawn” a realistic risk.
The real concern is that North Korea now has miniaturized nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery and armed missiles with nuclear warheads that could destroy the U.S. in a single blow with an EMP attack that would send the U.S. back to 19th century technology a la the NBC TV show “Revolution.”

And North Korea is hardly the only threat to destroy what some other nations and rogue players call “the Great Satan.”

Imagine if all the lights in America went off – never to come back on again.

Imagine if all the computers in America got fried – never to come back on again.

Imagine if all the cars in America dependent on fancy circuitry wouldn’t start – ever again.

Imagine if the grocery stores and the gas stations had to close up – for good.

That’s the kind of scenario an EMP attack can cause. The scenarios suggest massive starvation, lawlessness and chaos beyond anything Americans can imagine.
Scientists and other experts have warned for years that the nation’s electrical grid system, together with other critical infrastructures that have an almost complete dependency on electricity and electronic components, are highly vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse event, either from natural or man-made causes.

However, Congress and the administrations of previous and current presidents largely have ignored those warnings.

Events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, then the devastating Hurricane Katrina and more recently Hurricane Sandy revealed vulnerabilities to those infrastructures, for a time heightened that concern.

Nevertheless, none of this was enough to awaken policymakers who seem more preoccupied with making you less safe by restricting your ability to get firearms.

Make no mistake about it: An EMP attack poses the biggest threat to U.S. national and economic security in our lifetime.
An electromagnetic pulse attack on our critical infrastructures, either from an impending solar storm of serious intensity expected between 2012 and 2014 or from a high-altitude nuclear explosion, could have long-term catastrophic consequences for our society and our way of life.

A few years ago, a congressional commission went into considerable depth on those consequences to our electricity-dependent infrastructures that include not only the power grid itself but also telecommunications, our banking and finance system, our transportation system that delivers the very food and water on which our society depends on a daily basis, and the fuel needed to keep our houses warm in the winter and air-conditioned during the summer.

While these critical infrastructures continue to face such an impending crisis, Congress basically has ignored its own commission report and instead has treated the threat of an electromagnetic pulse event as a political football to be weighed against the need to establish an antiballistic missile system. Out of the debate, nothing has happened in either direction.

Officials in Indian-controlled Kashmir are warning residents to be prepared for a possible nuclear war by building build bomb-proof basements and collecting two weeks’ worth of food and water.
Local officials said the advisory was routine, though it was the first time it had been published in a newspaper. They said it did not signal new concerns about a nuclear attack in the region, repeatedly fought over by nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
A series of deadly skirmishes along the cease-fire line in recent weeks has heightened tensions between the two countries, and the timing of the advisory surprised many residents in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
“This is fueling an atmosphere of fear. Educating people is fine but not this brazen way,” said resident Fayaz Ahmed.
The notice, published Monday by the Kashmir police in the Greater Kashmir newspaper, advised people to build toilet-equipped basements large enough to house their entire families for two weeks. If there is no basement, residents should construct bunkers in their front yards, the notice advised.
The shelters should be stocked with candles, battery-operated lights and radios, it said, adding that stores of nonperishable food and water should be regularly replaced to ensure it is fresh.
The notice said that during a nuclear attack, motorists should dive out of their cars toward the blast to save themselves from being crushed by their soon-to-be tumbling vehicles.
“Expect some initial disorientation as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features,” it advises.
It also warns residents to keep people contaminated by fallout out of their shelters.
Yoginder Kaul, inspector-general at the civil defense and state disaster response force, said the advisory was part of a normal campaign to educate the public, and the information has been available on a government website for some time.
“We routinely train and educate people regarding different natural and man-made disasters and that’s our duty. This advertisement too was part of such a campaign. Please, let’s not read into this beyond that. Let it be clear that this is purely in the nature of educating people and not connected with anything else,” he said.
Both India and Pakistan claim the divided Kashmir region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.
Earlier this month, three Pakistani soldiers and two Indian soldiers were killed in the worst bout of fighting in Kashmir since a cease-fire accord was signed by the countries in 2003.
In light of the violence, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Sunday he was reviewing future ties with Pakistan.

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I grew up in a semi-rural town, where people had long gravel driveways spanning the massive acreage up to their homes. These driveways were almost never well lit, and sometimes if you weren’t paying attention, you would trample the grass and possibly end up in a ditch. A batch of photo luminescent stones mixed in with the gravel would come in handy on those nights.

That’s what Core Glow pebbles are. The pebbles are made of an aggregate of synthetic materials (basically a mashup of a bunch of different elements), resin and a hint of photo luminescent pigments. When exposed to sunlight, the pigments in the stone perk up and get excited. As day turns into night, the rocks emit an afterglow. They naturally illuminate a driveway to create a sparkling pathway that requires absolutely no electricity.
Because there are no wires and no bulbs needed for this source of light, these rocks, that seem better suited for an aquarium than a driveway, are completely carbon emission-free. The glow lasts for 10 to 20 hours and slowly fades as the charge wanes. The photo luminescent pigments on the rocks have been engineered to be waterproof, so even if a nighttime shower pops up, driveways will still be easy to find.

Completely necessary? No. Cool and extremely helpful in an area otherwise hard to light? Yes. Also, great conversation starter for out-of-town visitors.